The Rings of Power: on the river in Tolkien's Second Age of Middle Earth

[KorvinStarmast]

It's the sort of complaint that I've come to expect from someone who values adherence to the source material over quality of resulting product. The same kind of person who complains about Tom Bombadil being cut from Fellowship.

There are some add ins that I like, in particular the stone song/rock music by Durin's wife. I thought that was cool, and a way to bring dwarf ladies into the show to add depth to dwarf culture and their relationship with rocks, stones and mountains.

Even though the timeline with the three rings is a bit of a wreck, the insight that Celebrimbor had on the purity of Valinorian silver and gold being necessary to achieve their ends was a nice way to establish a difference between their rings and any that Sauron will make in the next seasons, and to allow Galadriel to let go of the "Vengeance au outrance" world view that was the core motivation for her during season 1.

While I also like that Elendil and Miriel are making a connection of some kind as the season winds up, I am not sure where they will go with that.

[warty goblin]

So here's a pointless sort of nitpick that doesn't actually bother me, but is rather interesting from a technical perspective.

They melted the whole dagger. This suggests that the dagger had a silver blade, since they said they needed gold and silver, not gold and silver in an iron and carbon* smoothie. Which, fine, silver weapons have a long and proud history in fantasy, even if silver is a terrible, terrible choice for blades. It also works way better as a scene than having them beat the crap out of the dagger with a whacking great hammer to separate the precious metals on the hilt from the blade. Or, you know, demounting the decorations and then just sticking a new handle on it, which you could absolutely do.

The cool part is that they melt the whole thing, and since gold and silver will happily alloy (traditionally called electrum) the contents of the crucible aren't going to be a pure metal. But then they centrifuge the results, and pour samples from different areas of the centrifuge into different molds, which is why they get three different ingots of three distinct metals. This is a truly fantastic little detail here, it makes about enough sense for fantasy stuff and leads to that marvelous scene of the spinning crucible.

I really like this entire sequence. It's got a lot of parts of casting metals entirely right, but they crank bits of it up slightly to emphasize the fantasy - you can't actually route liquid metal around in a gutter system like that because it loses heat so fast it'd solidify ages before reaching the ingot molds**. And it looked pretty believable for liquid metal as well, which is very nice after the travesty that was the rivers of molten 'gold' in the Hobbit movies - gold melts at over 1000 C, anything at those temperatures is a blazing orange. Overall probably one of my favorite sequences in the show, with a very good combination of practical and clearly magical stuff going on. I'd be shocked if they didn't have an actual jeweler consult for parts of it.

Only thing that didn't work for me was Celebrimbor's gemstones, which looked awful. You can buy nicer looking stones than that for like $10 a pop.


*Also that fire was nowhere near hot enough to liquify steel. I have serious doubts about it liquifying gold or silver.

**From the perspective of liquid metal anything that isn't glowing very bright red is insanely cold.

[Aedilred]

I really like this entire sequence. It's got a lot of parts of casting metals entirely right, but they crank bits of it up slightly to emphasize the fantasy - you can't actually route liquid metal around in a gutter system like that because it loses heat so fast it'd solidify ages before reaching the ingot molds**. And it looked pretty believable for liquid metal as well, which is very nice after the travesty that was the rivers of molten 'gold' in the Hobbit movies - gold melts at over 1000 C, anything at those temperatures is a blazing orange. Overall probably one of my favorite sequences in the show, with a very good combination of practical and clearly magical stuff going on. I'd be shocked if they didn't have an actual jeweler consult for parts of it.
.

Next you'll be telling me that you not only can't create a river of molten metal but you can't ride a wheelbarrow down it.

[Lurkmoar]

Next you'll be telling me that you not only can't create a river of molten metal but you can't ride a wheelbarrow down it.

I keep trying to forget that. That snapped my suspension of disbelief harder then Legolas loony tooning across the crumbling rocks.

[KorvinStarmast]

I keep trying to forget that. That snapped my suspension of disbelief harder then Legolas loony tooning across the crumbling rocks.

On to a different sort of critique, this nice lady has a turn of phrase that nicely sums up a number of the disappointments despite some good stuff: did not earn its run time

I also like that her review wasn't quite as caustic as some of the over-the-top 'this fails' criticisms.

An interesting critique that got a few smiles out of me. It's title is Galadriel is a psychopath, and it might be Galadriel as seen by Adar, were he writing the story. This approach was likely inspired by David Brin's article about Sauron, LoTR, Romanticism and Pragmatism in salon years ago.

Picture, for a moment, Sauron the Eternal Rebel, relentlessly maligned by the victors of the War of the Ring -- the royalists who control the bards and scribes (and moviemakers). Sauron, champion of the common Middle Earthling! Vanquished but still revered by the innumerable poor and oppressed who sit in their squalid huts, wary of the royal secret police with their magical spy-eyes, yet continuing to whisper stories, secretly dreaming and hoping that someday he will return ... bringing more rings.

If that's going too far, here's a milder version. Those orcs and low elves and dwarves and dark-skinned or proletarian men who fought for the Ringlord were fooled by Sauron's propaganda.

Fair enough. Even that slight variation adds flavor to an already-great tale, making you pity Sauron's dupes a little, even though you still cheer as they're slaughtered down to the last private and orcoral.

Come on, folks, a little empathy!

Instead of railing against "evil," try to understand it. That's always been the best way to defeat it.